Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
At the end of the canal behind my West Ocean City home, there’s a fifty-foot stretch of shallow water that ends in a little bit of marsh where I’m often fascinated by what I see crawling, swimming or walking in the water that is usually less than a foot deep. Minnows, mullet, menhaden and toadfish, blue, hermit, fiddler and horseshoe crabs, snails, muskrats, turtles, a neighbor’s Labrador retriever and all kinds of birds. I just never know what to expect, and observing from the higher elevation of my house gives me the opportunity to watch the critters do their thing without spooking them off to deeper water.
Last October, on a particularly warm afternoon, I happened to look at that little patch of water and saw a foot long silvery fish holding motionless in about eight inches of water. I mentioned to my wife, “If I didn’t know better I’d swear that’s a barracuda.” Grabbing the set of binoculars that we keep in the kitchen for such occasions, I zoomed-in on the fish and quickly realized that indeed we had a barracuda in the backyard, just soaking up the sun and waiting for a minnow! During the summer months we’ll sometimes encounter a barracuda or two offshore, but that was the first time I’ve ever seen one in the bay and I remember thinking at the time, “OK little cuda, it’s October and you’d better get your tail wiggling south because you’re not going to like it around here in a few weeks.”
Every year local anglers catch or encounter fish that they either have absolutely no idea what they are looking at, or as with my barracuda, just baffle us as to why they are here. Whether such fish are observed in the bottom of a minnow trap, on the end of a fishing line, swimming around a dock or free-jumping many miles offshore, they’re always a surprise and they highlight the fact that there are no fences in the ocean and it’s inhabitants can and will go as they please. The following is a short list of fish that for one reason or the other “seem” as if they shouldn’t be here but sometimes are:
Anyone who has bottom-fished down in Florida has surly encountered at least some of the various species of grouper, snapper and grunts. In fact, those fish can be somewhat common as far north as Virginia. But once you get above the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, catching one becomes a very rare event. A few years ago, while bottom fishing on the 1st Lump, we caught a 6-inch black grouper.
Another time, while diving on one of the Fenwick Shoal wrecks, I peered into a section of the structure only to see a 50-pound cubera snapper staring back at me. A little more common than snapper or grouper are grunts, which we seem to catch a half dozen of every year while bottom fishing in the late summer.
There are many species of butterfly fish around the world and all are tropical, but it’s not too uncommon for Delmarva anglers to find them in their spot or minnow taps. These beautiful fish are sometimes marked by bands of bright orange or yellow and often have a large black spot toward their tail. Anglers will usually recognize these 3 to 5-inch fish as something they’ve seen swimming in aquariums more so than in their bait traps. Lookdowns are another tropical species that are caught in traps or sometimes by anglers using small hooks to catch spot. Lookdowns are a very silvery fish with a tall but narrow body. They have a very flattened head that looks as if they ran into a wall, and with their mouth at the very bottom of the head and their eyes much higher up it appears as if they are always “looking-down” - hence the name.
Delmarva anglers are accustomed to catching the “northern pufferfish” which we affectionately refer to as “blowfish” or “blowtoads.” But on very rare occasions someone lands a smoothback puffer or porcupine fish. Growing up to three feet in length, smoothbacks can be quite large and are mostly gray in color. Porcupine fish sport a brown and white camo pattern and are best known for their long porcupine-like spines that turn them into a pincushion when the fish is inflated. Both of these species are more at home in warm southern waters than they are up here in the mid-Atlantic.
Stargazers are actually quite common in these latitudes, but anglers catch them so infrequently that they are often a source of confusion. While they somewhat resemble a toadfish, stargazers have a more rounded body and a straight mouth on top of the head and their eyes appear to be looking up to the stars. Stargazers bury themselves in the bottom and ambush their prey as it swims over. The most interesting thing about these fish is that, like an electric eel, they can develop and deliver a charge through their head, something you won’t see, but you might feel if you touch them between the eyes.
A couple years ago in late July we actually saw tarpon about five miles out on three different occasions. While these fish are no strangers to the Eastern shore, they are almost never seen north of the Virginia/Maryland line. The fish we saw were in schools of at least a dozen and looked to be roughly 5-foot long. Seeing them so close to our inlet and knowing that not too far south from here they’re routinely caught inside the barrier Islands makes me wonder if someday they might take up residence in Ocean City’s back-bay waters. Wouldn’t that be a thrill for local anglers!
Take the head (and teeth) of a barracuda, the body of a long flat-bodied eel and cover it in aluminum foil and you’ve got yourself a cutlassfish. Also known as a ribbonfish, these almost scary looking creatures are occasionally hooked by local anglers fishing offshore, but in other areas they are also known to frequent inlet and bay waters. Cutlassfish will reach lengths of up to five feet but most will be considerable smaller than that. In the south they are commonly kept for use as a trolling bait for king mackerel but around here they usually just scare the bejeepers out of any who catches one. Cutlassfish are scary looking but harmless – unless you put your finger in their mouth!
Captain Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
